A/N: Hi! I bet you're all surprised, huh? Well, you'll be pleased to know that I've started writing on the commute to and from work. So, failure to sleep tonight led to me posting this. Also, in the last week I discovered that the apparent cut off point to separate a novel from a novella is 40,000 words. I was… surprised, to say the least, when I looked at the word counts of my stories.
Also, I think Alex might be a little all over the place in this – any recommendations for improvements are welcome, as I might rework the chapter slightly to make it run more smoothly. Obviously, the plot would stay the same.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own anything you recognise.
Edit: em meant to post this last night, but for some reason the site wouldn't let me. Hopefully it's all fixed now.
-o-O-o-
Alex looked at the man carefully. He was not showing any of the usual signs of being a raving maniac in fact, most of his actions had been well thought out. And he apparently wasn't trying to take Alex far - it would have been easy enough to make Alex walk out of the hospital at gun point, but he had still mentioned the room. Alex was undeniably curious.
"No need to go and overreact like that," the teen huffed, striding into the room as if it had been his idea all along. An amused chuckle behind him let him know that the man was following him.
Once inside, the man closed the door and stuck a chair under the handle.
"If I put the gun away are you going to try and get away?"
"That depends," answered Alex. "Are you going to give me a reason to want to?"
"Not if you answer my questions," said the man, pushing the gun back into its holster.
"Let's hear them then," said Alex, with a put upon sigh.
"What can you tell me about Yassen Gregorovich?"
Alex raised an eyebrow. "He died about two years ago on Air Force one."
"Don't lie to me, Rider."
"I'm not lying! Why would I lie?" exclaimed Alex. "You've got a bloody gun and he's the bloody assassin who threw me to the bulls!"
The man paused. "Surely you meant wolves?"
"I said bulls, I meant bulls, now let me the fuck out of here."
"Not until you tell me the truth. I don't know why you're loyal to him, but you better start talking before it goes very badly for you, Rider."
Alex sneered. "I've been tortured before."
"I know."
Oh shit, how the fuck did he know? Who was this guy?
"But the thing about torture, Alex, is that it's not something you can get used to. You can't get used to someone making you scream and cry and beg simply to get what they want. How long did it take you to break last time? I know you did. How many times did you feel the knife tear into your flesh?"
Metal dug into him every time he jerked away from the knife against his back.
"How many cigarettes burnt their marks in your skin?"
Not cigarettes. He wished it was cigarettes. He could feel the iron melting into his skin. It hurt. Couldn't stop screaming. Oh god it hurt.
The man paused. "Or did they go the other route? Did they stroke you and touch you and hurt you so bad that you wished they had simply cut the skin off instead of doing that?"
There was movement, and then the cold blade of a knife against his cheek and warm breath on his ear.
"So tell me, Alex," whispered the man, sickeningly close, "Are you going to answer my questions?"
Alex lost it.
Whatever the man was expecting, it wasn't Alex's forehead connecting - hard - with his nose. There was a sharp crack as it broke and the man fell back, cursing.
"Fuck you," snarled Alex and leapt at the man.
The fight was swift, short and brutal. The man was good, obviously a professional, but Alex was enraged and had lost none of his edge.
The world became a blur of movement. His hands closed around the man's throat, pressing on his jugular but a fist to his ribs and a knee to his hip threw him off and he rolled away, only to come back up beneath the man's guard a moment and deliver several swift blows to the man's face when his arm was grabbed and wrenched sideways. Alex fell back to regain his bearings, and the man launched himself out of the first floor window, just as the door gave way and two angry soldiers fell into the room.
"Jaguar!" exclaimed Otter. "What the hell happened?"
Alex sighed. He was wondering that himself.
-o-O-o-
Ten minutes later, he was sitting in the room with Hawk and Jackal as the nurses fussed over him.
The cut on his face from the knife had been disinfected and had butterfly strips holding it together - just two stitches at the top, despite the copious amount of blood that had covered his face. His ribs had been wrapped - he wasn't sure they were even broken - and his recently relocated elbow was sitting in a sling.
Alex thought it was overkill, but had refrained from saying so under the reproachful eyes of Dr Cranmer - who had dealt with Alex's bullet wound and scared Alex more than any three SAS medics combined.
For a start, he had gone through with the threat to tie Alex to the bed by his foot and confiscate the TV remote unless he promised to behave. Three hours with the TV stuck on the most annoying child's TV channel had successfully broken Alex's spirit and the doc had never had a problem again. Except, of course, the slight issue of Force Three. Alex still shuddered and the thought if the lecture he'd received after he had returned from Australia.
Thankfully, the man had yet to clock that he had joined the army less than a month later.
"Gull should take lessons," commented Hawk, from the bed, and the rest of the unit snickered.
"Jaguar, what happened?" asked Jackal softly, after a moment.
"Thought he was a policeman," said Alex, "But I got suspicious quickly enough. When I asked to see ID he drew a gun and threatened to start shooting civilians unless I cooperated."
He paused and thought back. "It was weird. He wanted information, but he didn't seem to actually want to hurt me." Dr Cranmer, still stood in the corner, gave a disbelieving snort, but Alex ignored him.
"He was trying to get me to talk by bringing up what he could do and what- what had happened before."
Alex swallowed and shook his head.
"What do you mean, what happened before?" asked the doctor, his voice deadly quiet.
Alex shrugged.
"Alex," said the Doctor warningly. "We've been through this. You don't evade my questions when it concerns your health. What. Happened?"
Alex glanced at the soldiers and pursed his lips. He'd been fine. It had only ever bothered him in nightmares. He was dealing. He didn't want to talk about it and he definitely didn't want the soldiers to hear about it.
"Come on, son," said Dr Cranmer, resting a heavy hand on the shoulder of Alex's uninjured arm. "Let's go to my office, hmm?"
Immediately, Otter stood. "I'm coming with you," he said.
When Alex glared at him, he relented slightly. "I won't come in," he said, "but we're not leaving you alone when your opponent could still be around."
"I'll be fine," said Alex, through gritted teeth. "You wouldn't have thought anything of it before you discovered my age."
"That's because when you were in the SAS, your unit would have made sure you weren't alone - the same as you would have done for one of them. But now, they're gone, and we look after our own," said Jackal, quietly from the bed.
"Now that that's decided!" said the doctor briskly. "Come on, Alex. And you two," he said, turning to Jackal and Hawk, "had better be resting when I get back. Internal injuries are nothing to mess about with. In fact! Cougar, was it? You can wait outside the door."
The trio followed in the doctor's wake, leaving the two injured soldiers alone.
"I suddenly see why Jaguar didn't object," said Hawk with a smirk. "The man's a force of nature."
"Yeah," said Jackal. "And I am going to sleep now, before he does whatever it was that he did to Jaguar - I bet he would take on an earthquake, if given the chance. I doubt he'd behave for a doctor without some serious persuasion."
-o-O-o-
Alex stared dully at the can of coke in his hand. Dr Cranmer had started stocking it soon after he met his youngest regular.
"What do you want to know?" asked Alex, hoarsely.
"Well, why don't we start with when, and we can move on to what and why afterwards."
"About 7 months ago," said Alex. "MI6 sent me on a mission, but it was a set up. They wanted information on a prisoner, and thought I would know."
"He..."
He paused and looked up at the man. "Why are you making me tell you?" he demanded. "You know what they did!"
Cranmer did know. That wasn't the point. The point was that Alex had seen more than any man - let alone a child - should see. The point was that Alex refused to see a therapist. The point was that Cranmer could help.
He may not have told Alex any of that.
"I have a vague idea," he said. "That won't be enough to treat you."
"I've already healed!" protested Alex, and the doctor raised an eyebrow.
"Fine," muttered Alex, taking a drink to delay the inevitable.
"His... His favourite was this... Cross. Not like crucifixion or anything, just these two rough wooden planks nailed together so they could attach a limb to each corner. I hated that thing. There were nails sticking out all over the place. He'd take a knife or whip or hot iron to my back and if I tried to move away..."
Alex swallowed. "He loved making me hurt myself. Once, he hung me from these cuffs, and placed a metal barrel at my feet, then lit a fire underneath it. I could shred my wrists or burn my feet. I chose wrists. I thought I'd need my feet to escape. I made the wrong choice. My strength gave out and I ended up burning my feet anyway."
By now, Alex sounded almost robotic, but even now, Cranmer knew that the boy was at least facing it, not locking it away to fester. The boy fell silent and looked down at the gently fizzing drink in his hands. Cranmer waited patiently.
"I started to rationalise it. I couldn't control my situation, but I could control which pain it was. But then he changed the game. Kept asking if I enjoyed it, and that was why I hadn't told him anything. Christ."
Cranmer realised that tears were welling up in the kid's eyes, but affected not to notice. The kid deserved that much.
"I didn't enjoy it," said Alex, woodenly.
"I know," said Cranmer, soothingly.
"I broke," said Alex. "Rescue was right at the end of the hall - I could hear them, I think, but I broke, when I should have been strongest. He threatened to take my eye. He threatened to-" he choked and looked down again.
"He threatened to rape me," he continued, so quietly Cranmer could barely hear and, once he did, could barely avoid flinching. "But it wasn't that. Not really. I knew that if he got what he wanted, he'd kill me. I- I didn't want them to see me like that. They could stop him and I... I could let them, and not have to deal with it all anymore."
"And now?" asked Cranmer, cautiously.
"It was just the captivity talking," said Alex, flatly. "I realise as soon as he actually went to kill me what it really meant. I've always been a survivor and I wasn't about to let him change that."
"Did you ever talk to any of your unit about this?"
"Wolf tried, once," said Alex, the corners of his mouth tilting up slightly. "I've never seen him look uncomfortable - and I've kicked him out of a plane before now. He didn't really know how to handle it... Unlike you. Right, doctor?"
The last sentence was practically snarled at him, and Cranmer knew the ruse was up. Alex Rider drugged up and at the end of a mission was a very different creature to the intelligent and wary boy sitting in front of him.
"Let me check you over, at least, before you bolt," he said calmly.
"You saw them all when you wrapped my ribs for no good reason," snapped Alex. "We would have been here half an hour ago if you had seen anything wrong."
"I'd still like to check."
Alex growled, then snapped out a reluctant 'fine' and took off his shirt.
Cranmer carefully inspected the large white scar between the teen's ribs and thanked whoever was listening that it hadn't been on the other side and closer to the heart. His back was a mess, over the cross hatching of knife wounds that he'd stitched up last time, there were burn marks and whip marks and cuts that he couldn't quite name. But, they were all white and well healed and quite a few would probably fade away altogether given a few years.
He might talk to him about potentially getting some surgery to cover them, at some point, although not today. He needed Alex to calm down before the teen would even consider talking to him.
One thin white scar trailed up the back of his neck and Cranmer carefully followed it with his fingers. He didn't mess around with the spinal cord.
He lifted Alex's hair out of the way - it was longer now than it had been previously, he noted: less military and more teen-appropriate - and ran his fingers over the top of the scar.
There was a small bump, and he frowned, running his finger back over it.
"There's something here," he said, after a moment. "It's tiny - probably something that happened during surgery, or a small extra lump of scar tissue, but I'd like to take a closer look at it, if that's okay with you?"
"Like you're actually giving me a choice," growled Alex, under his breath. "Fine, do whatever you think is best."
"What's that?" asked Alex suspiciously as the doctor tool a black stick from his desk draw.
"It's the latest ultrasound wand," said the doctor. "Wireless and feeds directly to the computer. I've been asked to test them for the hospital."
"Is it bad that I find that kind of cool?" asked Alex.
"It means you spend far too much time in hospitals," commented the doctor with a raised eyebrow. "The gel is going to be a little cold, now, Alex."
"Just get on with it," sighed Alex. "I think I can handle some chilly gel."
The longer hair was getting in the way a little now, the gel clumping the ends together and blocking his sight until Alex huffed and reached around to pull it up against his scalp.
"Thanks," muttered the doctor, spinning the computer screen around and turning on the wand. "Here we go."
"Well, that's strange," he muttered after a moment.
"What's strange?" asked Alex, slightly worried.
"It's not scar tissue," said the doctor. "It could be bone, but if I had to place money on it, I'd say that it was made of metal."
-o-O-o-
A/N: Just in case any of you were wondering, no, I have no idea what is happening any more. My muse just keeps popping up in my head saying things like 'hey, that would be cool' and 'you can't let him get the file that easily, surely?' and 'you did want Yassen in this remember?'.
And now two completely new characters have sprung out of thin air and one may turn out to be a plot convenience, but I'm fairly sure that whoever is looking for Yassen is pretty important and atm, I have no idea why!
Anyway, please review!